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Ask HN: Has anyone successfully POC-ed a math-based alien communications primer?

3 pointsby unsui6 months ago
A common-ish trope in sci-fi movies&#x2F;books is the bootstrapping of communication between alien beings using a sort of mathematics-based &quot;primer&quot;, whereby atomic mathematical assertions (such as demonstrating truth and falsity), etc are used to &quot;build up&quot; a language for cross-alien being communications.<p>In these stories, it&#x27;s taken for granted that doing this can indeed bootstrap language.<p>That said, has anyone actually developed such a proof-of-concept for actually bootstrapping a language based on atomic mathematical principles, or is this simply left as an exercise-to-the-readers&#x27;-imagination?

2 comments

pvg6 months ago
Not strictly mathematical stuff but the wikipedia page has references to a whole pile of the more serious ponderings on this <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Alien_language" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Alien_language</a>
compressedgas6 months ago
Hans Freudenthal&#x27;s Lincos (1960) <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Lincos_language" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Lincos_language</a>